Wednesday, January 31, 2007

More Evidence of Incompetence

As if we needed any. The Hickey piece in the P-I today has already been the subject of much discussion on other blogs, but every time now that anyone from the M's front office opens their mouth, it just further proves them to be as far away from competent as a living human being can get.

This week's installment of incompetence is summed up in another variation of the same Bavasi explanation of this offseason that I've railed about before: we came up with a good plan, but sadly, we didn't understand basic principles of supply and demand sufficiently to be within even $2M/year on the value of ANY free agent.

It sounds pretty suspect to me that ONLY the 29 OTHER clubs could figure out how to spend the Nationals' sale windfall, the impending nature of which has been pretty public knowledge for about a year now. Huh. Well, that means either we've got us one sharp front office, not giving into inflation and all, or else we're burdened with the only group who can't count. Let's see...a quick check of the choice quotes from the article...

"By October, we knew that we needed two starters at least, and the market exploded," Bavasi said. "It became clear right then that we couldn't add a Schmidt or a Zito and add a second guy from our list, too. We needed some hitters, too."

The market exploded. Yeah, because the mysterious half-billion dollar sale of the MLB-collective owned Washington franchise was, uh, unpredictable? Bavasi and Co. went into the offseason, according to Hickey, with the plan of "Zito or Schmidt, or maybe Matsuzaka, plus hitters," armed themselves with a surplus $20M from the Nats sale, and didn't figure that the other $560M would get spent?

There's a reason, by the way, that Seattle needed two frontline pitchers and one or two hitters before even considering such luxuries as more fifth starter candidates. Let me think...oh, yeah. Bavasi's been at the helm long enough that his incompetence is reflected in the poorly-constructed team on the field.

Didn't know it was coming? Surprised by the price of fixing the broken roster? Mr. Bavasi, I salute you for your Gaius Baltar-like ability to survive despite your overall incompetence, and to act--and seemingly genuinely believe--that you are just a victim in all of the disaster that is the 2007 Mariners.

From the perspective of everyone around you, sir, you are not the victim to be pitied so much as the monstrous architect. And the scariest quote from the article?

Weaver and Batista were among the top six starters the Mariners targeted back in October, Bavasi said.

"If you told me we were going to get two of these guys, I would have been very, very happy," he said. "And I am happy."

If you're happy about landing Jeff Weaver and Miguel Batista, then I'm happy you're getting fired in 2007. You can go on the good-old-boys carousel of jobs and wreck some other team for some other fans. Indeed, I'd be outright ecstatic if you got to replace Brian Cashman, so you could thoroughly destroy the Yankees.